“I wanted to see how far you would go…and how much I could take.”

Pedro Almodóvar is a filmmaker who is very much aware of the power he has over his audience. He is a skilful artist who has mastered both the art of writing and visual composition, creating works that are as beautiful as they are provocative, and usually tend to take the viewer hostage through their raw, complex emotions that run the gamut when it comes to both psychological nuance and socio-cultural detail. One of his greatest works is Bad Education (Spanish: La mala educación), which is coincidentally one of his most controversial, with the story of a pair of childhood friends who reconnect after decades following their forcible separation garnering acclaim and courting controversy in equal measure, particularly for its powerful and harrowing depiction of sexual violence asserted against children. It has not gained the status as one of his canonical masterpieces yet (especially since it was made in between Talk to Her and Volver, two films that are almost universally considered amongst his finest work), but yet still holds a very special place in his career, especially amongst those who look towards his stories for their reflections on identity, particularly around queer issues. It’s beautifully poetic storytelling infused with radical rebellion, Almodóvar engaged in an artistic tug-of-war between the two styles as he ventures into the lives of these characters as they plumb the emotions and depths of the past, come to terms with their shared history and attempts to soothe the perpetual scars that linger after a difficult childhood. It’s an ambitious work that falls well within the director’s wheelhouse, while still pushing him as an artist, considering the depth of the ideas that inform most of this film. Unnerving and beautiful in equal measure, and driven by a sense of incredible honesty, Bad Education has taken on an important role in Almodóvar’s expansive career, and it continues to be extremely influential as both a work of artistic expression and an opportunity to work through the traumatic nature of the past.

Except for a small handful of films, every work that Almodóvar has made deals with important issues, even if only subtly and quietly. Bad Education is one of those which make their underlying themes clear from the start but also covers other concepts that create a layered, complex tapestry of a particular moment in the history of his country, which is perhaps the single element that binds all of his films together. To realize the true scope of this film and what it represents, we need to pay attention to some of the more subtle cues scattered throughout the narrative – the significance of the events taking place primarily in the early 1980s, with the backdrop of the 1960s not being arbitrary, but rather indicating the director’s insistence of viewing these ideas through the lens of reflecting on Spain under the regime of Francisco Franco, which is a fascinating concept that many directors of Almodóvar’s generation infuse into their work. The fundamental framework around which this film is constructed is that of identity – the character of Ignacio is someone who has yet to fully reveal himself to the world. He is someone who drifts through life as a solitary being, shapeshifting into versions of himself that are barely recognizable, doing so for the sake of manipulating the good faith of others and getting ahead. This is also not a random piece of character development, but instead an intentional act of exploring the confusing process of exploring your sexuality and gender identity, something that has become a prominent point of discussion in recent years, but was almost non-existent in the era in which this film is set. Almodóvar walks a very narrow line between provocation and exploitation of these themes, especially when introducing the concept of sexual violence within the Catholic Church into the narrative, which he alludes to early in the film, but which only fully manifests as the primary propellant of the narrative midway through. Thematically rich, Bad Education proves to be one of the director’s most bold projects, at least in terms of how it views the central ideas, which was to be expected but still nevertheless remarkable to see in practice.

Bad Education is one of the director’s most audacious works and one that continues to polarize viewers with its frank and often uncomfortable view of sexuality and how it can lead to actions that spiral out of control, resulting in a neverending cycle of violence and abuse that can soon come to define an entire generation. Almodóvar is unquestionably angry, and we can often tell when he is working from a place of apoplectic rage since his stories become darker and the dialogue consists of statements that are cutting and devastating, and usually lead to a more cynical conclusion. His fury is constantly reflected in this film – he may not be telling an autobiographical story (although as with any of his works that centre on artists, it’s clear that some part of himself is present in the characters, even if only marginally), but rather telling a story about the country of his origin and the many souls who found themselves corrupted and destroyed by the burden of the past. Once again, he is taking quite a risk with the commentary present in this film, and he is very careful to not suggest that sexual violence results in the main character’s gender dysphoria, but rather that it can break one to the point where they lose all sight of the person they were before, intent on erasing the past through redefining themselves entirely. It’s a challenging endeavour, but one that Almodóvar is more than capable of doing exceptionally well, particularly in how we find the esteemed director placed in a position where he is reckoning with the past, attempting to make sense of the chaos that defined the childhood of his generation, crafting it into an engaging and daring narrative that centres around the past and the very narrow boundary between those who defined it and those were defiled it, which proves to be even more opaque the further we venture into this story and witness the past through the eyes of a director who is at his most fearless, at least in terms of how he chooses to navigate this tricky narrative and its potential for controversy.

For nearly a quarter of a century, Gael García Bernal has been one of the great actors of his generation. Few performers are more willing (and some may even say enthusiastically) to challenge themselves than Bernal, who has in turn been allowed to play complex characters on multiple continents, working with many exceptional directors and delivering work that is spellbinding and compelling, solely based on his extraordinary commitment. Bad Education is a legitimate contender for his finest performance, specifically because this film seemingly pushes him to do more than he ever did before or since. Almodóvar is known for bringing out the best in his actors, and rumours (which have since been debunked, or at least heavily softened) claim that the process of making this film was daunting for both the director and his star, whose clashes over the interpretation of the role likely made this their sole collaboration. Yet, even as a single pairing between the two incredible artists, the film is an extraordinary achievement – Bernal dedicates everything he has to the role of Ignacio, as well as the various personas that weave in and out of the film. It’s difficult to imagine an actor better suited to the role since the character needs to switch between brooding, overly intense masculinity and more quiet, sophisticated femininity – some actors can do one but not the other, whereas Bernal is more than capable of playing into both without it coming across as inauthentic for even a moment. He’s supported by a tremendous cast, which includes Fele Martínez (who eventually transitions into the film’s central protagonist after the twist is revealed), Daniel Giménez Cacho and Lluis Homar, all of which may be secondary to the central performance, but who still fill out the ensemble incredibly well and bring Almodóvar’s vision to life in vivid detail. It is one of the first instances where the director works with a primarily male cast (the female roles are small but memorable), and he brings the same sense of dedication to this film as he did when working with his “Chicas Almodóvar”, using his actors to tell a complex story that is only made more remarkable by their exceptional work.

There are some scholars and critics who view Bad Education as a bridge between the director’s major eras, particularly since it combines both his penchant for bleak dark comedy and unconventional narratives with a sense of melodrama and intense conversations around identity and the role of the individual in a changing world. Both components exist in earlier and later works, but if there was ever a film that best demonstrated the transition in as much detail as possible, it would very likely be this one. Much of this is due to the structure and execution of the story, which is where Almodóvar is doing some genuinely impressive, daring work. Tonally, the film oscillates wildly between dark comedy, intense psychological thriller and dense melodrama – all three of which are recurring throughout the director’s work, but not always overlapping with as much intensity as we find here. The main allure of Bad Education is directly tied to this idea of interweaving different elements – it is a metafictional film, using the concept of film-within-a-film to narrate the stories of the protagonists, as well as indicate the sometimes ambigious division between reality and fiction, which the director implies is not always as clear-cut as we may imagine. We don’t ever truly find out the truth about any of these characters, not because Almodóvar conceals this information from us, but rather because he creates characters that quite simply do not lend themselves to this kind of clarity – the audience is not expected to understand who these people are or what they represent, but rather that they are vague spectres of a past that no longer exists in anything other than the generational trauma left behind, and the stories they told and which have evolved into contemporary folklore more than anything else. The film’s constantly shifting tone matches the intentionally inconsistent narrative structure and makes Bad Education a work of immense complexity and incredible honesty, saying more about the past than many more direct, honest depictions of this era and its people.

Bad Education is a film about human desire and societal decay, and how the two are interrelated in ways that are sometimes difficult to comprehend. There is something truly astonishing about this film, which is one of the director’s most austere and bleak works, particularly because it seems to be his most direct attempt at addressing the past, not layering it with grotesque caricatures and intentionally tacky imagery, and abandoning the absurdism all together to create a more provocative production that is not any less enthralling. It’s a beautifully daring work that features some truly extraordinary ideas embedded in its fabric, woven together by a director who masterfully finds the nuance in some extremely harrowing subject matter, somehow managing to make something as haunting and harsh as sexual abuse and murder seem poetic, at least in how he uses it as the foundation for an incredibly complex work of cinema. We may never quite understand the lengths to which this film goes to explore these themes, and it is clear that there are nuances that can only be comprehended by those who experienced this era and its aftermath directly – but as both a genre-defying masterpiece and a work in which an artist negotiates his complex relationship with the past, Bad Education proves to be exceptional, a tightly-constructed and meaningful work that finds Almodóvar at his peak as a writer and director, drawing out wonderful performances from his cast and telling an essential story that is both daring and profoundly disconcerting, which he uses to his advantage while diving into the endless depths of his personal history, where he hopes to find a way to understand the events that defined his early years, as well as the many ambigious figures that reside within.